American Red Cross app helps prepare kids for emergencies

WICHITA FALLS, Tx (RNN Texoma) - With the new kid-friendly app, Monster Guard, the American Red Cross is teaching kids how to stay safe during emergencies.

In seconds, your life can be put in danger by a tornado, a fire, or even an earthquake.

As adults, we prepare with insurance and pack emergency kits but how about our children?

"If there is a fire there's a little beep thing that goes 'beep beep' and we get out the building super fast," Brock Bussey, 5, said.

"We bend down on our knees and then we cover our head if it's a tornado," Julie Sullivan, 7, said.

With several disaster drills taking place in schools kids know what to do on campus but disasters don't always strike during school hours.

"With the kids now in days, most of them are home by themselves in the afternoon after school and it's better if they're prepared," Linda Stevenson, the Red Cross disaster program manager said.

For that reason, the Red Cross is encouraging children to use their new mobile app, Monster Guard, to teach kids how to prepare for real-life emergencies at home and other environments.

"It goes step by step what a child can do in case of an emergency," Stevenson said. "It starts with home fires, what do you put in a preparedness kit, and then it goes into the different disasters."

With the help of five friendly monsters, kids practice what they learned through a fun and challenging game.

"We needed something for the kids," Stevenson said. "The kids love to play games on their phones and their tablets, and they always have them in their hands. We thought this was a good way to get them excited about being prepared."

That's exactly what Emmalynn Allen, 7, said caught her attention about this new app.

"You get to learn about what you do if theirs a fire and that's always important because you never know if it's going to happen or not," Allen said.

If you want to see the monsters in action, you can download the app for free at the American Red Cross webpage.